'Der Wilde Osten'

economy - There is no "one China" - IHT

I thought I was kicking in an open door when I started my book on 15 misunderstandings on China and the Chinese (here in German) by explaining how different the Chinese are and how divided China and its consumers were. But the nice thing of an open door is that you can keep on kicking and today the International Herald Tribune does it again. Still, a nice introduction into China:

"In China, dialect plays a very important role in advertising," said Arvind Sethumadhavan, based in Singapore as chief executive of Advanced Techniques Group, a division of GroupM. "You want consumers to relate to what is being said in an ad."
After Mandarin, Cantonese - spoken by about 60 million people in Guangdong Province and in Hong Kong and Macao, as well as among ethnic Chinese populations overseas - is probably the most important language for advertising.